Hope You are Not A Robot

Today I "marked as spam" 4 comments on old blogs.  One was pretending to sell Peyton Manning jerseys, which J-dude wants to purchase just to bug his grandma, because the 2 of them are the most avid and opinionated football fans in our family and just because he loves her.  That's the way it works.

Regarding the need to prove you are not a robot:  I think the Comment Moderation on old comments is working, so that the rest of us don't have anything to prove.  Of course if I blogged more regularly (ahem) I would be able to have more data with which to verify this hypothesis.  (Note clever wording to avoid dangling participle at end of previous sentence, something that bugs me only slightly less than spam comments from robots and only slightly more than Peyton Manning.)

Mentioning Peyton will probably bring more robot comments.  So would mentioning Ugg boots.   Oops.

Yesterday, December first, in Central Illinois, the 4 of us worked together to put away the summer outdoor paraphanelia such as the trampoline fabricky parts, the patio furniture, grill, and deck pots.  And then today the temperature was in the 60s.  Go figure. 

Today there was some major room cleaning by the little people, some major squirrel-chasing and an unacceptable amount of barking outside by Samarra, and some leaf-raking by The Player.  What did I do?  Hmmm...I made an acceptable amount of chili.

It is the beginning of Advent and today's reflection at NCC revolved around the theme of Hope.  What Wild and Crazy Thing do you Hope to see in your lifetime?  My answer was that there would be No Fear.  I believe fear is the root of all evil.  Fear drives us to do ridiculous things...be greedy for fear of not having enough, do absurd things in the name of health care for fear of dying, treat people inhumanely for fear of the differences between us.  I wish we could see the connections between and among humans, animals, plants, the Earth and the Universe.  If we would let it, hope could also drive us to do ridiculous things...be generous, accept, be compassionate, open our eyes.